"Theodore Roosevelt is best remembered as America's prototypical "cowboy" president-a Rough Rider who derived his political wisdom from a youth spent in the untamed American West. But while the great outdoors certainly shaped Roosevelt's identity, historian Edward P. Kohn argues that it was his hometown of New York that made him the progressive president we celebrate today. During his early political career, Roosevelt took on local Republican factions and Tammany Hall Democrats alike, proving his commitment to reform at all costs. He combated the city's rampant corruption, and helped to guide New York through the perils of rabid urbanization and the challenges of accommodating an influx of immigrants-experiences that would serve him well as president of the United States. A riveting account of a man and a city on the brink of greatness, Heir to the Empire City reveals that Roosevelt's true education took place not in the West but on the mean streets of nineteenth-century New York. "--

"Theodore Roosevelt is best remembered as America's prototypical "cowboy" president--an outdoorsy, rough-riding figure who was as versatile with a six-shooter as he was with a pen, and who derived his political wisdom from a life spent in rugged and inhospitable environs: the Dakota Badlands, the battlefields of Cuba, and the African savannah. Roosevelt himself did little to dispel his outdoorsy aura, and for decades historians have bought into this mythology. Yet while such experiences certainly contributed to Roosevelt's progressive politics and abiding love of the natural world, they've played an excessive role in defining his biography. In fact, Roosevelt was a native Manhattanite who came of age in the upper crust of New York society, and the reformist, anti-corruption policies for which he would come to be known were firmly rooted in the realities of life in the 19th-century city. A riveting portrait of a man and a city on the brink of greatness, Heir to the Empire City reveals that Roosevelt was a New Yorker through and through, and that his true education took place not on the ranges of the West but on the mean streets of New York"--